2011 — Design Flanders Gallery, Bruxelas

Reporter sem Beiras was part of the group exhibition 'Design Directors' in Design Flanders Gallery, Brussels (09.09 - 30.10.2011).

Designers are constantly questioning their role in a time in which everyone designs or is thinking of designing, while the essential designing questions are becoming constantly more complex. Design Directors shows how the young designer is redefining the role of designer and establishing his or her priorities. A new road has opened up and it is not limited to simply developing objects. The designer is becoming highly aware of the world for which and in which he or she designs. Aspiring to a better world, the need to explore in more depth and breadth the content of responsibilities at social and cultural level has considerably increased.

The designers want to provide direction and generate processes themselves. They see themselves more as strategists, directors and researchers, and actively involve other designers and artists, together with experts from other areas, including the consumer. Thinking together generates increased mutual trust, the courage to make difficult but conscious and thought-out choices and take risks, a condition for developing new bold ideas and therefore innovation. Objects may be – but do not necessarily have to be – the direct visible result of these processes. With this exhibition, Design Flanders is putting several young designers in the spotlight and showing how they work and deal with these deverlopments.